Domino’s Pizza bought out the registries of five couples whose weddings got canceled by pandemic

Alyssa Wyche and her fiance love pizza.

So, near the beginning of July, they signed up for a Domino’s wedding registry. They added $40 worth of Domino’s pizza to their registry, and even though they had to postpone their August wedding because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, they thought maybe a family member would boost their mood with a cheesy meal.

A few weeks later, when Domino’s emailed Wyche saying the company was sending her a surprise, she thought it was a hoax. A few days later she visited her online registry to find that every item had been bought. A note read: “Did we just buy out all of your wedding registry? Oh yes we did. Congrats on your postponed wedding. Love, Domino’s.”

Wyche couldn’t believe Domino’s would do that, but in the next few days, merchandise that cost the company about $3,000 appeared in boxes on her home’s doorstep in Prince George, Va.

Domino’s paid for the wedding registries of five couples, including Wyche and her fiance, Yannick Allicock, after they postponed their weddings.

“We would’ve been starting from scratch,” said Wyche, a 22-year-old ultrasound technologist. “This helped us to not have to go into our savings when it came to having that fresh start together.”

Domino’s found itself with leftover money this summer because of canceled influencer events. The pizza delivery giant has donated food to health-care workers and families in need during the pandemic, but Kate Trumbull, its vice president of advertising, searched for other ways to make a difference. She allocated thousands of dollars to pay for couples’ registries.

She picked five couples who signed up for a Domino’s wedding registry, a concept created in 2017 and emphasized this year as many couples canceled weddings.

“We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we not only fulfill their Domino’s registry but also fulfill all of their traditional registries?’” Trumbull said. “That’s something that would just blow people’s minds and be unexpected.”

The act indeed surprised Wyche, who needed about a day to process the gesture. Allicock, Wyche’s fiance, lives in France and hasn’t seen Wyche since January. Wyche said he needed to renew his visa to fly to the United States, hold a wedding ceremony in Virginia and live there with her. But seven days before Allicock’s meeting in the U.S. Embassy in Paris, Wyche said, the State Department suspended routine visa services at all embassies.

Wyche and Allicock postponed their August wedding, and while they don’t know when they’ll see each other again, they plan to hold a ceremony on Zoom with only a few people.

“All of that has been really tough on top of the stuff going on with the pandemic, not being able to see him,” Wyche said. “So, it was a really nice surprise.”

Los Angeles residents CJ Colace and Dani Haberman had everything planned for their October wedding by the time the pandemic began consuming the United States. But in the following months, they both lost their jobs, and they postponed their wedding to 2021 for safety reasons.

They signed up for a Domino’s wedding registry for fun after seeing a sponsored Facebook advertisement, and when Domino’s later emailed them saying it was sending a surprise, they thought the company would deliver cheap souvenirs. Instead, Haberman checked their registry online a week later to find that all of the items — totaling about $4,200 — had been purchased.

Even the products they never imagined friends buying, such as a $979 sofa, were soon delivered to their home. They planned to remove some expensive requests on their registry closer to the wedding. They don’t know when they’ll work again, but the gifts will help them start their marriage and find a new home.

“So much about the wedding had become sad and about the loss and what we didn’t get,” said Haberman, a 28-year-old fashion stylist and singer. “Nobody expects a global pandemic to hit in what’s supposed to be one of the most exciting times of your life and your marriage. They gave us a little bit of that joy back.

“They have got a customer for life. They gave us a life-changing gift that they didn’t have to.”

New York residents Jon Hoche and Megan Bussiere started planning their wedding as soon as Hoche proposed on New Year’s Day, and they were ready to celebrate, so they scheduled a July wedding. They later postponed the ceremony to 2021.

Hoche, a 40-year-old actor and puppeteer, has been out of work during the pandemic, while Bussiere has stared at a computer screen as a speech therapist for a special-education preschool. They’ve spent most of their time in their small apartment, but at least now it’s filled with gifts totaling about $1,500.

“Just the feeling of receiving good news, it had been so long,” Bussiere said. “It really gave us so much hope that there can be good news after a hard time and you can feel that joy and that excitement even over material items. It felt so good to experience that joy, and we’re still experiencing it, seeing all those beautiful things around us every day.”